In the next few features we will examine the patterns and materials of several different traditional sweaters and see how tradition informs trends in design. Today, we’ll focus on the Lusekofte of Norway.

Ann McCallum is a former professor at Williams College who taught the Architecture II course for 24 years. One of her assignments was a special favorite amongst advanced students: to design a building (more specifically, a museum) using the design idiom of a renowned architect and to build a model of it. In a special exhibition on view at the Williams College Museum of Art, nearly 100 models produced over a decade by McCallum’s students are currently on display.
For this assignment, McCallum asked each student to select a renowned architect and to study their chosen architect’s work over the course of a semester. This way students learned specific artistic strategies. As a final project, they designed museum facades in the styles of their selected architects. Ultimately producing the models exhibited at Williams College today.
Though these miniature buildings echo familiar forms and quote signature idioms, they ultimately convey a new built environment—offering an unconventional opport ...

Since the dawn of civilization man has used mirrors for practical and religious purposes. They can be seen as a symbol of vanity or an object of insight; today they are even used as safety and security devices.
From the biblical “through a glass darkly” to Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass;" mirrors imbue our folklore and popular culture with a reflection not only of ourselves and the world around us, but into other worlds as well. Mirrors have also taken on many forms as society has changed and new technologies were invented.
In order for a smooth surface to act as a mirror, it must reflect as much of the light as possible and must transmit and absorb as little as possible. In order to reflect light rays without scattering or diffusing them, a mirror’s surface must be perfectly smooth or its irregularities must be smaller than the wavelength of the light being reflected. (The wavelengths of visible light are on the order of 5 by 10−5 cm).
In a new bo ...

Would you ever consider upholstering a chair in tiger or panda fur? I am sure you are saying “No!” at this moment and recoiling at the thought. Why wouldn’t you consider the use of these materials? Because these animals are endangered and we know that to kill them is to destroy the last of their species. Did you know that there are tree species that are similarly endangered, tree species that we specify daily for furniture, flooring, and interiors?

There is just something about ceramics. Something intimate, something infinitely familiar. The story has it that Prometheus fashioned man out of clay and he loved his creations so much that he gave them the gift of fire. Man fires earth just as we toast bread and it becomes something magically delicious, we fire earth and it transforms into a miracle.
While walking the Coverings trade show in April I read this manifesto written by Maiarelli Studio for Ceramics of Italy and was so moved I thought I would share it here:
"We Care: A Declaration of Purpose:
We begin with what we stand on: clay and sand. We form it into slabs and fire it at volcanic temperatures. Our tile can be humble. It can be majestic. It can be shaped in an infinite number of ways. A single tile can be as large as a table, as thin as wire. It can withstand fire. It can withstand extreme conditions. It breathes with its environment. It lasts for decades. It is not merely decoration. It ...

At NeoCon earlier this month I saw an increasing trend towards using “greener,” “more natural,” and “less toxic” materials. But did you ever ask yourself “Why do they put all this stuff in materials anyway?” No one wakes up in the morning and says, “I am going to manufacture the most toxic products possible.” And yet there are many materials that the design community is now trying to avoid due to this very issue.

Home ownership wasn’t always common in the United States. For a nation in which 67.4 percent of its citizens own their own homes this seems unfathomable but Americans had to be coaxed into becoming homeowners. Selling the Dwelling: The Books That Built America’s Houses, 1775-2000 shows the 225 year story of how "the American dream" of home ownership was made accessible.

What hues come to mind when you think of 1950s colors? Most people think of carnation pink, light turquoise and butter yellow. What we think was history and what history actually was are often two different things. How do we mediate this circumstance? By referring to period documents. Here we have assembled 1950s color palettes, which represent four different design phenomena: Fashion, Interiors, Architecture and Automobiles.

Any substance arranged in a thin, open structure could be described as a lamella structure, for example the lace-like marrow found in the center of bones. In architecture, the term refers to a specific type of timber construction; originally developed by Fritz Zollinger in 1908, it was patented as the Zollinger-Bauweise in 1910 and was most commonly used between the World Wars when metal beams were cost prohibitive.